


Soldier of OZ: Walker's Account

by Synthesis



Category: Gundam Wing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synthesis/pseuds/Synthesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In AC 195, five Gundams are sent to Earth in Operation 'M', testing the strength, virtue and intelligence of officers and soldiers of of the Alliance. After failing his first encounter just a few days later at Corsica, one ex-engineer gets a second chance for a better outcome, and takes it. An effort to reconcile 'Gundam Wing' with 'The Glory of Losers', from the perspective of those in the secretive Order of the Zodiac.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

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_When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things._

\- 1 Corinthians 13:11  


When they spun alive and began firing, the two rotary machine cannons inside the chest cavity of the red-and-white attacking Gundam were unbearable—whether it was the sound they produced or the actual, obvious danger they presented to the closing squadron wasn't clear to him, he admitted—but it was like some masochist had thrown Walker into washing machine with a half-dozen cement blocks and set it to 'permanent press'. When the enemy pilot finally ran out of ammunition for both them and its arm-carried Gatling gun, and the cannons' report died down, he felt like he could think properly again.

He wanted to let off a stream of vile swearing, but all he could force out "Damn, maybe one-twenty-five caliber? One-thirty?" It mostly came out as unintelligible mumble—he was so tense, it felt like his jaw had frozen. That was the engineer in him, coming out at an inconvenient moment.

"He's…he's out of ordinance! We did it!" Walker's wingman, Arrow 1-4, announced excitedly.

Either his jaw finally unfroze, or he overcame his self-imposed mental block, and he responded over his headset. "Stay on guard! Don't assume anything!"

_ Did it work? _ Walker checked his port and starboard displays. With the Gundam having expended all its ordinance, and only joined by another Gundam that carried no range weapons as far as he knew, the Aries squadron formed a perimeter within a dangerous hundred-meter radius—a deliberate choice, it seemed like the best distance that their chain rifles would puncture that damnable Gundanium alloy at this rate. _At this distance, we're going to worry about shooting through him at eachoth…_

"I'll show you what the _Speciali_ are made of!" Arrow 1-4 screamed, breaking formation and diving at the red-and-white Gundam.

"Fool! You think we can afford a mistake now?" he yelled back at him. It took less than a second for him to realize his mistake actually hadn't amounted to much—the whole unit had made a deadly mistake anyway—as distant lights began to glow on his sensors.

"Contact!" Arrow 1-3's pilot screeched, panicking.

As soon as it had "worked", the operation promptly fell apart. Enemy contacts raked their position with cannon fire from the ground, unconcerned with friendly fire hitting the Gundams on the ground. "Arrow squadron, regroup goddamn…"

His voice was drowned out by the sound of Arrow 1-4 exploding to 7 o'clock. A high-caliber cannon shell, probably HEAMS, punched through its head compartment from the back and triggered an ammo explosion, showering the Gundam in shrapnel.

"Regroup!" he screamed again. "Raptor, this is Arrow Actual, we're taking suppressive fire from heading three-five-two, I repeat, taking fire and need assistance."

The high-power zoom lens in his main camera brought the enemy within vision. Years of studying every design he could get his hands on paid off, and he recognized them immediately: they were Winner Corporation models, in brown and tan colors. _The Maganac Corps._

Loud radio static responded, telling him his antenna had been hit anyway, and that calling for help was useless. At their most vulnerable from below, Arrow Group was getting shot down one by one. Their promised ground cover, Raptor Group, was probably already wiped out by the Maganacs.

_ Damn it all, if we're all dying here, Bonaparte better give our sacrifices some bloody meaning! _ He gave one last glance at General Bonaparte's escaping command ship, a zeppelin of all things, as it managed to vanish in the heavy clouds of smoke rising over Corsica Base. A few minutes earlier he'd promised Bonaparte he fully intended to give anything, including his own life, if it meant securing the ranking officer's safe escape, and he meant it!

 _ If a 'Specials' soldier can't do his duty to a general officer of the United Earth Sphere Alliance Army, he's not worthy of that name. _ With a flick of the switch, he reversed the thrust of his twin turbofans, then leaned on the throttle until he hit emergency war power and rapidly put some distance between him and the second black-and-white Gundam. He then switched to an open frequency. _Bonaparte, if you don't take this opportunity, you can join me in Hell._

Letting himself fall to his emotions, mostly rage and fear, he gave one last defiant scream over the short-range backup antenna. "Come and get me, you monster!"

The new plan was simple and desperate: if he made the Gundam come to him, it wouldn't be going after the general. With his enemy lacking any range weapons, he'd have to put up a chase, letting Walker exploit the Aries' legendary maneuverability in the air. Then, he'd hoped to live up to the Aries' name, ramming, and exploding, the pursuing Gundam—he thought he had enough jet fuel and ordinance on board to crack through the Gundanium shell around the pilot's cockpit, and through even just one tiny hole, flood it with superheating gas, exploding shrapnel, burning jet fuel and even his own cindered guts if it meant killing that damn Gundam pilot!

_ Or not. _

With unbelievable speed—perhaps the defining trademark of those damnable Gundams—the enemy pilot caught him between his two massive heat shotels, the curved blades actually cutting through the titanium alloy that made the Aries.

Every warning tone in his cockpit went off simultaneously, as the glass of his displays cracked and showered him with glass. Even with the goggles, he blinked once as his cockpit was crushed from outside.

_ I wonder how close I was to taking him with me. _ He found himself barely holding back a terrified chuckle as the most crucial alarms rang. "I…I wanted to see what this machine was capable of…" he admitted to himself as a wayward electrical current went through the systems behind his seat and into his arms and legs. It was the worst electrical shock he'd ever experienced, worse than anything a career as an engineer at Corsica Base could throw at him, and it was just a symptom of what was probably cooking his insides.

Walker had prepared for this. He was waiting for his life to flash before his eyes, for the familiar scenes to dance by before he descended into nonexistence, scenes from his early childhood in North America, his adolescence at Lake Victoria. When that didn't appear, he waited for the specific faces of those close to him—his mother, his younger sister Aretha, the many faces of those who'd most left the great impression on him. His master during his apprenticeship at the Corsican Arsenal, his instructor at Lake Victoria, his old commander, the Lightning Baron…

But none of them came. And then everything there was went white, then black, and he faded into nothingness. Flight Officer Walker could have sworn, as impossible as it was, that the last stimulus he felt from the outside world was a boy's voice, earnestly telling him, "I'm sorry."

_ I'm sorry too. _


	2. Ajacio

_"We don't need the Specials. They'll just use this as another excuse to show off. Remember, those men confuse the battleground with some sort of aristocratic game. They want to fight so badly, they go looking for it themselves. I'll teach those bloodthirsty Specials a few things about intelligent warfare!"_

\- Brigadier General Alfonso Bonaparte, Alliance Army

The year is After Colony 195. The Earth Sphere—humanity's homeworld and the artificial colonies in orbit of it—is largely dominated by the Alliance, a multinational military government that has long since extended beyond the reach of its humble civilian leadership and its original mission: to prevent the catastrophic warfare and genocide of earlier centuries. They've succeeded because, while the Alliance Armed Forces consist of a fraction of the fighting men of the last centuries' world, they've done so under a united banner and with the unshakable resolve of their beliefs.

Within the Alliance military, the elite Special Mobile Suit Troops, known by the Italian "Speciali", had made great strides both in military victories and the sciences of warfare, both doctrinal and industrial. They represented both the convergence of elite soldiers and development and refinement of the most elite of military weapons, the mobile suit. Accordingly, there were a great many within the Alliance military who distrusted the Speciali: young leaders, directly questioning the traditions of the Alliances. Under their commander, Colonel Treize Khushrenada, the Speciali continued to ensure their own indispensability within the Alliance war machine. To add to the suspicion, Colonel Khushrenada was himself a member of the secretive Romefeller Foundation, one of the many bodies that had made it financially possible for the Alliance to rise to such great heights.

Thus, the Speciali are not just a distinguished military unit, but they directly control the supply and development of mobile suits within the Alliance, as well as being charged with the training of the Alliance's most crucial combat army corps. Their reputation on the battlefield is excellent, earning their an unspoken right to act independently, in any battle, as they see fit. However, it can't be denied that this status has angered the traditional military establishment even further.

Befitting their reputation, the men and women of the Speciali were an common sight in Alliance military hospitals around the world. When he came to in one, Oswald Christopher Walker immediately felt two things.

The first was surprise—surprise that he should wake up at all. He hadn't been expecting to.

The second was terror—terror that he'd done something to his back and was paralyzed, because he couldn't feel his legs. As it happened, the reason he couldn't feel his legs was because he was literally opiated out of his eyeballs. The next day, he was able to feel his legs and even wiggle his toes.

Thankfully, this wasn't his first experience with short term physiotherapy. Two years earlier, during the Pyongyang Raid, the Speciali had been tasked to defend the Korean city from space-launched nonnuclear ballistic missiles, namely by interception, while the Alliance moved on the colonials from their staging ground over Earth.

Walker's first OZ-07AMS 'Aries' was shot down over the Sea of Japan, to his considerable embarrassment. After they fished him out, he spent two weeks in the Third Alliance Naval Hospital, in Yokohama. Pyongyang was defended without him, the colonial raiders repulsed largely by the Space Forces. Walker ended up with a set of pins in his left leg that he had only had removed a few months before the Gundams descended on Earth, and he spent his recovery in his old profession: mobile suit engineering.

He learned he'd fared worse the second time he'd had a mobile suit destroyed from underneath him than the first, to the point that no number of pins in his leg was going to fix it. Part of the reason he'd been so heavily drugged was to account for the lung transplant—his actual lungs were so full of superheated glass, plastics and polycarbonates that they'd been scalded from the inside.

Additionally, he'd gotten a new heart—as a child, he'd been told he'd had a "minor" heart murmur that was supposed to have been treated years ago. Apparently, the current produced by the cockpit electrionics in a mobile suit was enough to undo that, and shortly after his lungs were replaced, the surgeons elected to replace his heart as well. The not-so-funny mental image of his doctors deciding to leave him open "just in case" persisted in his head.

All of his replacement organs had belonged to a healthy shift assistant manager at Corsica who'd been killed when the Gundams first landed, a year younger than him, just out of secondary school. He'd been told shrapnel had basically carved out the inside of her skull, so as long as there was nothing wrong with his head, she could supply the rest. If there was ever a time to remember to wear eye-protection, that was it.

The Fifth Alliance Naval Hospital, in the seaside Corsican city of Ajaccio, was where he was treated. For all he knew, the poor shift manager had been an amateur long-distance runner, because it wasn't long before his lungs and heart actually felt better than he had remembered.

As the doctor said, "Just don't go running any marathons, are we clear, Flight Lieutenant Walker?"

That was another thing—he'd been promoted. The lead squadron of the 44th Special Airborne Division, Middle East Air Army—battlefield designations Arrows, Beacon and Crow—had been reduced to about one-fourth operation strength and been disbanded, being absorbed into the rest of the air army. Despite that gloomy outcome, they were heroes—Brigadier General Bonaparte and his command staff had evacuated, and were alive.

It was April 16th, one week after the Battle of Corsica. Though he was largely on his feet again, he'd been left entirely out of the loop—after the battle, and with the Corsica Works still in ruins, the French island was practically in its own world, quiet and isolated. The hospital staff enforced the communications blackout. It was when his younger sister Arethra, an Alliance Space Forces staff officer, second lieutenant, had shown up. She'd arrived Earthside, just now learning her brother, listed as "KIA" was actually "wounded and in recovery" that he finally learned what had happened in the meantime. Even after she'd cried for about ten minutes after seeing him—a surprise to him, he'd never thought they were that close—she managed to debrief him.

"The Forty-Fourth's gone," Arethra told him, following him through the hallways of the recovery ward. Walker opened his mouth to groggily curse in response, when Arethra cut him off. "But Bonaparte's not letting it go. He said he owes the Specials his life…"

"…he sort of does…" Walker mumbled, opening a door and stepping onto a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. The converted villa that housed the hospital had picturesque views in any direction.

"…and he's fought for you tooth-and-nail. Apparently, the Defense Ministry doesn't care about replacing the Corsican units until the works themselves are actually rebuilt, 'waste of money'. Bonaparte says he'll resign of he has too."

Walker smirked, saying nothing.

"What's that mean?" Arethra countered, sounding a little annoyed.

"Overreact much? He'll still have his command, if not in Corsica, then somewhere else in the Mediterranean Air Army."

Arethra stopped and put her hands on her hips. "Did you ever think that, maybe, Bonaparte is doing it out of  _loyalty_? To  _you_?"

That shut Walker up, which Arethra unsurprisingly took advantage of.

"Cynical's not a good look for you, Oswald."

_That's a particularly poor name for someone in my profession._ "Please don't call me that." He tried to change the subject. "How're the Space Forces treating you?"

"I'm more worried about you," she countered. "Your career was the Middle East Air Army. And being in the Specials, your career was your whole life."

"Please, don't exaggerate," he said, leaning on the balcony, his medical gown blowing in the wind. "Everyone knows the M.E.A.A. had low anti-mobile suit strength, it was never intended for that. Naval interdiction, air defense, strategic bombing, those are what the unit existed for, and it's what it's done for the last decade."

Arethra looked at him, apparently unsure of what he meant.

He sighed and continued. "…if the Gundams are the real enemy, which it seems clear they are, in Earth Sphere, a unit that doesn't prioritize anti-mobile suit warfare isn't going to be…helpful."

Arethra's short visit made him even more desperate to return to duty, and something convinced his doctor—either Walker or maybe one of his superiors—that he needed to return. He'd heard that the Lighting Baron, Zechs Merquise, was now using the OZ-00MS 'Tallgeese', the "historic artifact" Walker had found and planned the restoration of before he was wounded in action. Above all, he wanted to meet Zechs—he knew there was a slim-to-none chance he'd get to serve in the Lightning Baron's unit like the old days, but at the very least, he should have been there for restoration and operation of the 25-year-old prototype. Walker wasn't the only OZ-certified engineer in the Speciali, of course, but he had a horrible feeling that Zechs and his unit would taking the machine into their own hands. Someone who overlook some safety consideration or think that 15 Gs was  _survivable_ , and get themselves killed: if it was Zechs Merquise, the single person Walker personally knew that commanded the most respect, man or woman, he couldn't live with himself.

**II**

It was five days after Arethra's visit. Freedom was so close he could nearly taste it.

"Flight Lieutenant, please take a deep breath...now…"

Walker inhaled and exhaled as methodically as he could.

"Flight Lieutenant? You finally did it," Dac said.

Standing next to him, in the physiotherapy doctor's office, was a familiar face—Pilot Officer David Ackerson Bishop, 21st Special Air Division, North African Air Army. "Dac" as he was better known belonged the same class at the Alliance Lake Victoria Academy, the top mobile suit school in Earth Sphere. It  _was_ the top school because the faculty was made up of veteran Speciali. Put more cynically, the school was the best because all the Alliance cadets there were trained by OZ—the so-called "Order of the Zodiac." With his boyish features, blond hair and blue-grey eyes, Dac was actually a familiar, comforting sight. Mostly.

Dac smirked, in that way of his. He was in Corsica on his way to the Alliance Air Base at Brandenburg, but the Gundam attack had detained him for now. "More like 'about damn time,' am I right?"

Walker chuckled back. "Thank you."

"Or should I say 'about damn time,  _sir_ '?"

"Enough, Dac."

The annoyed doctor removed his stethoscope, shot them both a glance, and put it back on. "Flight Lieutenant, if you'd please, again, with less talking."

Walker nodded and took a deeper breath, before exhaling again, and waited for the doctor to return to his chart before speaking again. "By the way, happy birthday. How was it?"

Dac grinned, shrugging. "Like any eighteenth birthday in the army. I can finally buy a drink in French bar."

" _Mazel tov_."

The doctor returned, this time holding a hypodermic syringe. Dac immediately looked away, as Walker raised an eyebrow at the physician. "Another one, doctor?"

"Your last one, I promise. Cholera."

Walker rolled back his hunter green wool coat sleeve and his white dress shirt and the doctor injected the vaccine. When he finished, he removed the needle and Dac turned back.

"I like the new uniform," he said, quickly, a little too casually.

Walker did the sleeve back and nodded. As a Flight Officer, he had worn the uniform the Speciali were best known for, and that Dac still wore—a hunter green tunic with the same cut as the olive single-breasted jackets worn by Alliance military officers, with long gold-and-maroon epaulets, closed collars and sleeve trim. What he wore now was slightly different—Speciali flight lieutenants still wore dark green, nearly black daily uniforms, but they consisted of double-breasted black coats with no lapels, short epaulets with bullion fringe, over the same gold-and-maroon collars. Additional flight lieutenants no longer wore their garrison caps.

When he first joined the Speciali, Walker, more an engineer than a soldier, had mentally mocked the increasingly anachronistic-looking attire of the higher officers. The red uniforms worn by lieutenant colonels and blue uniforms worn by colonels were even more ridiculous. Now that he was wearing one, and the culture of the Speciali had taken its effect, he had to hide how proud he was to wear the Napoleonic-style uniforms.

"Let's hope I live up to it."

"We're all done here," the annoyed doctor told him. "Good luck, Flight Lieutenant. Don't forget your poncho and your knife."

Dac laughed as Walker immediately turned to nearby counter, taking the white silk-lined black leather cape and ceremonial saber, folding them into a bundle and leaving the room hurriedly. Dac followed him.

"You're not actually going to wear that…sir…?"

"I might," he responded, holding them in his arms. "Why not?"

Dac skipped a few steps ahead and mockingly curtsied him, grinning from ear to ear.

"Have fun in Africa, glorious flight lieutenant. Make  _his lordship_ , the Lightning Baron proud."

"Take care of yourself, Dac. But I'm sure nothing  _bad_ ever happened in Germany."

**III**

Returning to service meant stepping aboard a blue Tupolev transport aircraft, where he'd step from Alliance territory—the Fifth Naval Hospital in Corsica—and among his comrades in the Speciali. Practically it was a tiny difference, but after almost two weeks, it meant the world to him. After nearly getting his cape caught in the gap between the jetway and the door, he took a seat among the other Speciali, other officers who had been fortunate enough to make it out of Corsica with his lives, now engaged in conversations as though it was any other day.  _Maybe spirits are just high. Not a bad thing._

He scanned the cabin, confirming what he'd feared back in the hospital.  _No one else from the Forty-Fourth. So I'm alone for now._

As though reading his mind, a flight officer spoke up at him down the aisle. "Lieutenant Walker, Forty-Fourth Division?"

Walker almost smiled, only stopping when he confirmed the man speaking at him was a stranger. "Yes, do I know you?" he asked, a little sadly.

"Sorry, no sir. I'm a friend of a P/O in the same unit, B. Disraeli," he explained, gesturing at the empty seat, which Walker took. "He was looking at photos, trying to find survivors from Corsica, you came up."

Walker nodded. "I've heard his name, but we're not acquainted."

"That's what he said. I apologize, sir."

"It's no problem," Walker assured him.

"Excuse me, sirs!" a voice called out. Walker and the other officers turned to the front of the cabin, where they saw a rough-dressed pilot officer and warrant officer, their hunter green uniforms unbuttoned and missing their collars. The cabin grew silent, as the passengers waited for one of the two women to speak.

The pilot officer swallowed nervously, squeezing her folding cap in one hand. "As your pilot, it's my sad duty to…to inform you that we've just received word of a Gundam attack on the Lake Victoria Academy…"

The cabin remained silent for another second before, almost in unison, the mobile suit pilots that filled the cabin cried out in horror, disbelief, or just broke out into distorted swearing and cursing.

"The damage reports are still coming in, but it looks like a single Gundam destroyed an airlifter carrying the new Taurus mobile suits, along with multiple hangars and at least one student dormitory." Standing behind her, her co-pilot had both her hands closed in fists, and was barely holding back angry tears.

The man sitting next to him, a young Latino with thin rimmed glasses, visibly began crying, tossing off his spectacles and covering his eyes with his gloves. For his part, Walker simply sat in shock, his jaw slack, as he tried to process what he was hearing.

"…if any of you have family at the academy, you're welcome to use the telephones in the back of the cabin. We expect to taxi onto the runway so, but for the time being, the aircraft crew will be taking a moment of silence…for the tragedy that's just happened."

" _Iesus Khrīstos_ …" someone could be heard mumbling among the whimpering and crying.

It was no exaggeration to say that every man and woman in the front cabin was a Lake Victoria graduate. What had just happened was practically the worst nightmare of any Speciali, come to life.

The pilot and co-pilot stood in the front of the cabin for another moment, tears streaming down the co-pilot's face, before returning to the cockpit.

Walker stared at the two Speciali sitting opposite to him in his booth, a Caucasian man and woman who were both flight officers, holding each other's hand on the armrest between them. The woman was wearing a medical eye patch over one eye, but tears streamed out of the other one as she whimpered silently.

And he just sat there, closing his mouth finally. He didn't expect to cry himself, but there was still a dull ache in his new heart, one he wasn't sure how to express.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Thanks for your interest, but given how far I've gotten into this, I felt I owed it to any readers to explain a few things.
> 
> First, what is this? You could say that, on top of the obvious, it's a reinterpretation of the events of Gundam Wing as well as the new manga Endless Waltz: The Glory of Losers. In addition to trying to reconcile both stories, I'm also offering my own "rational" interpretation of the events. In the tradition of Gundam, Gundam Wing can be pretty ridiculous at times. To try to address the occasionally zany narrative from the standpoint of a rational individual can be pretty fun. Additionally, this story is told from the perspective of Walker, that is, from the perspective of men and women in OZ, and with according sympathies. That's probably quite obvious by this point. While even Sunrise Entertainment calls the Gundam pilots "terrorists", I personally think the word is thrown around too much in our day and age, but at the same time will be telling this in a way less sympathetic to them compared to the loyal opposition.
> 
> With that out of the way, hopefully you'll keep reading, and if you've any criticism, compliments, or insights, I almost always enjoy hearing them.


	3. Nairobi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reassigned to Nairobi, Walker puts the matter of the Gundam out of his mind as much as he can.

_One month since the Battle of Corsica, Nairobi Air Force Base._

Since the "normalization" of martial law in East Africa in AC 191, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, southeast of Nairobi, had been militarized into the headquarters of the East African Air Army, the third of the three Alliance Air Armies in the African Continent—one for each Alliance military district. Though it was staffed by civilian and military workers, Bantu people from throughout the country, the actual military mobile suit presence, as well as much of the rest of the Alliance Army and a large portion of the Alliance Air Force personnel, originated from throughout Europe and Asia. Accordingly, they had no idea who Jomo Kenyatta was, and the installation was almost universally referred to as "Nairobi Air Force Base." Civilian traffic had been diverted to other airports in the region, like Moi.

Nairobi was strategically important to the Alliance—good access to multiple port-cities on the Indian Ocean via railways, close proximity to the dozen oil refineries in South Kenya that refined the imported crude oil that the UESA and the region as a whole needed.

Kenyan perceptions of the Alliance were a varied, but generally positive. The elderly were direct witnesses to the extensive military campaigns conducted by the African Union with the formation of the United Earth Sphere Alliance sixty years ago. In the subsequent half-century, there had only been one "hot war" in the entirety of continental Africa, at the Battle of Mogadishu, an impressive feat. Years before, in AC 139, the UESA had allowed the relatively bloodless three-day annexation of all twelve districts of South Somalia by Kenya. On the other hand, particularly in Nairobi, people were less enthralled with the heavy interference of the Alliance East African Military District on domestic politics. Centuries ago, in the dangerous neighborhood of Somalia, anarchy reigned and guns flowed. Nowadays, even the police didn't always carry firearms: everything was controlled by the Alliance, and the African Union.

Flight Lieutenant Christopher Walker actually liked Kenya. Particularly in Nairobi, the people were very cosmopolitan and reminded him a little of his childhood in Windsor in North America. Besides Swahili, they were fluent in English, which made communication easy. On a personal level, they seemed impressed by his rank in the  _Speciali_ —that it was clear from his uniform that he wasn't one of the "Alliance riffraff" as they called them.

He was waiting for an assignment—there were two Speciali units in Nairobi, the 33rd Independent and the 19th Airborne Mobile Suit Divisions, but they were awaiting orders to be reassigned to India and elsewhere. The moment Walker had dreaded for years had come: for the first time in his career, Walker was one of the  _non assegnatti_ , the name for active-duty Speciali pilots who weren't attached to a Special Mobile Suit Division or Battalion. Practically all of them were attached to Alliance units—Zechs Merquise was a well-known example.

It was pretty normal for high-ranking Speciali, but for Walker, it was just a memory of how much he missed the Forty-Fourth. Serving with the Alliance Army Mobile Suit Troops was a reminder of just what separated them from the Speciali: for their part, the Alliance considered them upstarts, spoiled, dangerous brats. The Speciali considered the Alliance pilots rude, corrupt, and violent jarheads.

"Hey, Lieutenant, you still here?"

Walker was sitting in the open cockpit of an OZ-07AMS 'Aries', in Alliance cadet grey livery. Being a non assegnatti had given him more time to ply his engineer training, even if he found the Alliance Aries pilots a little obnoxious. Plus, if the call came, all non assegnatti would climb into Alliance mobile suits and fight, and potentially die, along their Alliance comrades. Even the Alliance pilots understood and appreciated that.

At the very least, throwing himself into engineering took his mind off what had happened at Lake Victoria. "Hey, Ozzie!" the same voice yelled.

For a second, Walker wondered if 'Ozzie' referred to his rarely-used given name.  _Probably not. Probably just OZ._ "I'm in here Beauttah," he responded, flipping the master electronics back and forth.

Chief Engineer Beauttah, a Kenyan with almost twenty years in the Alliance Army's mobile suit engineers, treated the third hangar at Nairobi has his living room, dining room, and bedroom, and the mobile suits in it as his possessions. Hangar No. 3 housed fourteen OZ-06MS 'Leo' mobile suits, along with Nairobi's scant four Aries air defense machines, including many OZ-06MS2 "early types" and at least one OZ-06MSK "command type," which Beauttah was charged with. He did not like Walker poking around, but there was little he could do about it.

Beauttah climbed up the ladder onto the gantry and peered into the Aries, as Walker tapped a finger against the top-left forward switch panel.

"Something the matter,  _sir_?" Beauttah asked sarcastically.

"Unit three's turbofans," he asked, referring to the suit he was sitting in, "Are they Aviadvigatel or Pratt & Whitney?"

Beauttah frowned, leaned into the port top turbofan airtake, then turned back to him. "Pratt & Whitney."

Walker nodded in agreement. "Mmhmm. And tell me, for Pratt & Whitney E500-A6 turbofans, like this one, what's the thrust-to-weight ratio?"

"Eight-point-one to one, why?"

Walked pulled himself out of the cockpit, then jammed a stack of paper printouts into Beauttah's chest, and replied angrily, "Then why can't this unit break seven to one? Your Pratt & Whitney's either need overhaul or they need to be replaced."

Beauttah stared at Walker, confused, then past the silhouette of the Aries at the open hangar doors immediately behind it. Walker took the red pencil out from behind his ear, removed his goggles and replaced his garrison cap. "I  _knew_ I heard something half-an-hour ago! You bloody busybody, don't you have anything better to do with your time?"

"I'm amazed you can sleep through that," Walker countered, climbing onto the top rung of the ladder.

"Wait!" Beauttah reached into his work satchel and took something wrapped in wax paper. "This came for you, from that jeweler in Nairobi."

He tossed it to Walker, who caught it. Holding onto the ladder, he tore the wax paper open with his mouth and removed a layer of bubble wrap to reveal a small, polished disk of titanium with chrome electroplating.

"What's that?" Beauttah asked.

"You've never seen a mobile suit pennant before?" he asked, holding it up. The pennant medallion bore the emblem of the Special Mobile Suit Troops, a defaced Alliance coat-of-arms, and a small inscription.

"Not really, no. What are they for?"

"Well, if you belong to an old family or clan, you have one of these things engraved with your coat of arms and your motto. Identification's etched on the back. It's designed to survive a crash or even an ammunition explosion. I don't personally, but I still have a slot in the center of my machine's seat over the battery access to mount one."  _They're rare in the Alliance, but all Speciali have them, even those from the proletariat. And I doubt they'll find mine._

"So what does yours say?"

He looked at it. "When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things." He looked back up at the chief engineer.

"That's from First Corinthians," Beauttah said, his voice softer. "I didn't know you were religious."

"I'm not. On the contrary, I'm an atheist. But I do enjoy that saying. Oh, and by the way, the semi-active radar guidance is sketchy. Seems like voltage fluctuations. If active radar and laser go down or aren't available, the backup better damn well work flawlessly."

With his leather gloves Walker slid down to hangar floor and walked over to his motorcycle, leaving Beauttah up there.

"Oh, how about I just install a wire-guide? That way, someone has to cut your bloody missile wires to fuck up your shot!" Beauttah screamed back down at him as he climbed onto his motorcycle, put on his goggles again, and kicked up the stand.

"Just the semi-active, Chief," Walker replied before drowning out his voice with the four-stroke engine and peeling off out of the hangar.

Beauttah watched Walker's motorcycle leave the hangar and sighed, before reaching for the telephone on the hangar wall. "Nzima? It's Beauttah in number three…they're fine, except we'll need to rebuild unit three's turbofans. Probably all of them. Yes, I know."

**II**

Walker wouldn't say he "loved" motorcycles—he  _was_ a gearhead, as he'd been told, and motorcycles had been where he cut his teeth on as a mechanic, as an apprentice at a motorcycle repair shop in Windsor when he was twelve, even before he'd considered a military career. Back then he might have loved motorcycles, but in the seven years since then, he'd been forced to approach mechanics from a practical standpoint, whether they were motorcycles, automobiles, aircraft or mobile suits. He'd worked on all of them in wartime, and he'd come to one conclusion: the greatest military machine in the world, without a human operator, was a large, expensive proof-of-concept or the world's largest paperweight.

Accordingly, it wasn't much of an exaggeration to say that humans—in the case of the military, soldiers, officers, pilots—were valued, not machines. Now, he wasn't about to claim that a single human life was automatically of greater strategic worth than a 100,000-ton fusion-powered aircraft carrier and the forty Aries mobile suits it could carry, but that was false equivalency anyway.

_It becomes harder to love machines if you're obsessed with making sure their human users come back alive, even at the cost of machines._ The Aries he lost in Corsica had been his since the Pyongyang Raid two years ago, and while he regretted losing it, it wasn't so much the machine he missed as much as the failure to accomplish his objective in it. It wasn't really 'his' anyway, no  _sane_ mobile suit pilot 'owned' his or her machine—it was property of the United Earth Sphere Alliance.

He  _did_ own his bike, literally. He'd ordered it off the Network shortly before leaving from a seller in France, a direct replacement of the bike he'd lost in Corsica, an ancient Armstrong MT500 that had become popular again in England around AC 190. It had a 481 cc air-cooled engine, single cylinder four-stroke, and was a good match for his size. Walker guessed his old bike was destroyed when the Gundams destroyed the utility lift he'd left it on when he boarded his Aries, which they  _also_ destroyed.

_I'm starting to resent them_ , he thought, has he drove down Airport South Road.  _Especially the black-and-white one._ He bounced on the bikes suspension as he passed over a rough section of road, watching the sun set in the west.

In a few minutes, he became aware that he was being followed, or at least, he wasn't alone on the road. Glancing in his left rearview mirror, he spotted something reflecting the setting sun back at him—in a few seconds, it grew larger and louder as it approached him, and he could make out its distinct report, different from his old four-stroke—it was probably three times the size of his, by engine displacement. The motorcycle was also a sport bike design, even a superbike, probably Japanese, and much heavier than his military bike.

Walker drifted towards the shoulder as the superbike slowed down to his speed, giving him a good look at it.  _A Suzuki Hayabusa. You don't see those very often, not in Africa anyway._

He was actually more interested in the rider: it was a woman in a formfitting leather motorcyclist's suit, solid black and zipped in the front. Her head was completely hidden by a closed full face helmet, painted white with a black visor. Out of the back of the helmet, she had long, thick black hair that reached to her waist.

The rider glanced at him at he stared at her, the visor still obscuring her features, before turning back to the road and accelerating away. Walker almost didn't notice that, attached to her seat, was a military saddlebag with the emblem of the Speciali sewn into the leather.

_Was that…her? Why would she be here?_

**III**

"So who was it?"

Walker looked up. Flight Officer Tycho Nichol, a Speciali officer a few years Walker's senior and an ambitious, worldly man by comparison. Nichol may have lacked battlefield leadership experience, but he made up for it in flexibility: he'd served in as an attaché for the Alliance Space Forces, overseeing management of mobile suit troops.

"I told you, I didn't see her face."

Nichol rephrased the question. "All right, who did you  _think_  it was?"

He stood over him as he sat in the media room, whose walls were lined with televisions set to various news channels. Several tables in the middle had computers stacked on them, near where Walker sat.

"A woman I knew, a Speciali Flight Officer. She was in a Special Recon Battalion in the Indian Air Army." He paused and frowned. "'Knew' might be the wrong word. A woman I'd heard of."

"Did this woman have a name?"

"Why? She's probably been promoted to F/L by now," he told Nichol, using the acronym for 'flight lieutenant'.

"Well, does she?"

Walker didn't like being teased. "Forget I mentioned it. Who's that on television?"

"Who do you think? The Ministry." Nichol suddenly checked his beeper, which was vibrating on his belt. "Excuse me, sir."

_I wonder when he's going to be promoted._ Walker turned to the television and watched the broadcast of Duke Karl Friedrich von Hohenzollern, a big shot in the Romefeller Foundation and the Alliance Defense Minister, addressing the legislature, the United Earth Sphere Assembly. The Assembly was probably the single most powerful body in Earth Sphere, at least legitimately, and it still dominated Alliance politics. Of course, the Assembly was a huge body. More than a few of them were also members of the Romefeller Foundation, a secretive group Walker knew more about in concept than in reality.

The Duke was discussing the ramifications of diverting further mobile suit assets—primarily, the independent mobile suit army corps that were stationed as reserves throughout Europe and East Asia—to space. Aside from the Gundam attacks, Earth as a whole remained peaceful, compared to the colonies, which were in a state of military rule and outright rebellion. The congress in Tokyo was probably going to last to a few more weeks, only to produce more indecision. General Gwinter Septim, commander-in-chief of Alliance Space Forces, was notoriously difficult to deal with.

_Really, this typifies the Alliance's problems. The largest armed force in human history, as well as the most technologically advance, and head can barely agree with itself, much less communicate with the arms and the feat._ Walker sighed.  _Every so often, I doubt whether our sense of smug self-superiority is justified, and then the Alliance does something that proves it is._

Take Nichol, for example: he had made a name for himself in linking the two sides of the coin of Alliance space supremacy: the outer space Pioneer Troops, and the colonial Space Assault troops. Besides the fact that they both used variants of the OZ-06MS 'Leo', the Alliance's combat-proven battle machine, they had virtually nothing in common: they didn't even use the same  _color scheme_  on their mobile suits. Pioneer Leos were charged with high-stakes vacuum no-gravity combat that involved distances of thousands of meters, at minimum—shooting down rebel colonial cruisers, frigates, and ballistic missiles, for example. Assault Leos, by contrast, were used for actual boarding operations and all fighting that happened inside a colony—as such, it was closer to conventional Leo urban combat, just at claustrophobic distances of a few meters. Typically, Pioneer Leos escorted the MS carriers that ferried assault Leos to docking rings on the outside of a targeted colony.

Some Speciali, including Nichol, served among the Pioneers or Assault Troop for periods of time, though Nichol himself was more of an advisor than a soldier. Walker didn't envy him: unlike the Speciali, who were a tightly-disciplined, homogenous unit, wherever they served, the whole Alliance military had legendary inter-service rivalries, bordering on hostility. Each branch and even many sub-branches had its own academies and schools, and admirals from the navy actively distrusted generals from the army and air forces. It had  _always_ been like this—indeed, this inter-service hostility was probably one of the reasons for the success of the Speciali, who were considered a more desirable option than overcoming those rivalries.

_I suppose there's the possibility that if the Alliance ever got its act together, we Speciali would be obsolete. Where would that leave me?_

Probably in the secretive technocratic society that was "OZ"—the Order of the Zodiac. After all, people were needed to actually design, manufacture and maintain the weapons of war, whether they were mobile suits or machine guns. That was one of his specialties.

"Flight Lieutenant?"

He turned to see an Alliance junior officer looking at "Yes?"

"Call for you, sir. Luxembourg."

_Luxembourg?_ He stood up, looking at her. "Who is it?"

"Uh…'The Main Armaments Directorate of the Ministry of Defense'," she replied with uncertainty.

He almost fell over on his cape, running to the private room to take the call. In his rush, he hadn't even asked  _who_ was calling him from Luxembourg.

_I haven't heard that name in years._ The bureaucratic-sounding name was actually a real thing, or rather, it had been the year Walker was born, AC 176. But that was almost twenty years ago, it had long since died a merciful death.

Taking a deep breath and straightening out his uniform, Walker put the handset to his head. "This is Walker. Who is this, really?"

" _Very good, Flight Lieutenant. Do you recognize my voice?_ "

Walker did, immediately. "Of course, your Excellency."

 


	4. Luxembourg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Called to the headquarters of the Specials, Walker finds himself assigned to a new project, which gratefully survived the bloodbath at Corsica

_Findel Airport, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg._

"You ever feel like you live in one of those things?"

Flight Lieutenant Walker stood in front of the Tupolev passenger liner, one of the most common supersonic transport aircraft used by the Alliance, in royal blue-and-white Speciali livery.

The question was posed by another Speciali officer, a flight officer, stepping down the mobile stairway, who had a tired look about him as he carrier his suitcase. He was speaking of the aircraft.

"I suppose I do," he admitted. He'd been relocated to Nairobi after his convalescence, only to shuttle over to Luxembourg a few days later on urgent business. He might have done well to stay in Corsica in the first place.

The flight officer saluted him and walked towards the airport terminal. Walker turned to the ground crew around the aircraft.

"I have urgent business in Ansembourg, could you guys unload my motorcycle right now?"

"Already on it, Lieutenant."

With all his luggage in a single small saddlebag, Walker took a half-hour long motorcycle ride to Ansembourg, northwest of Luxembourg City. The weather was excellent—a reminder why he took the risk of not wearing a helmet, with the wind rushing past his face. When the occasional Luxembourger waved at him from the side of the country roads, he waved back, wondering if they waved because of his hunter green uniform or because they were unusually friendly.

He came to the central gates in front of the New Castle of Ansembourg, where he was greeted by two Speciali sergeants.

"Flight Lieutenant O. C. Walker, Special Mobile Suit Troops," he said, introducing himself as he stepped off his bike.

"We've been waiting for you, sir. Would you mind waiting here for a few minutes, we'll take care of your bike."

"Sure," he said, removing his goggles. "I just need to get two things."

Unzipping his saddlebag, he took out his cape and his ceremonial saber, which he put on as the motorcycle was pushed away along the walls that completely surrounded the castle. When he finished, he looked back up at the New Castle, in a little bit of awe. The castle was more than six-hundred years old, but he was more interested in what had happened there a few scant decades ago.

In AC 176, coincidentally the year Walker was born, there was a transformation in the Alliance military bureaucracy. The Main Armaments Directorate of the Ministry of Defense had been founded with the Alliance forty years earlier, in AC 133, charged with the task of commissioning, organizing, storing and distributing the materiel used by the largest military force in the human history. It was one of the Alliance's greatest accomplishments, the other being the simultaneous task of keeping that materiel from falling into the hands of those who opposed the Alliance's definition of peace, and it had done so reliably for forty years.

Then, in AC 176, the multiple experiment design bureaus from across Earth Sphere, in employ of the Romefeller Foundation, a major backer of the Alliance, united to produce the original variant of the first mass-production mobile suit, the OZ-06MS 'Leo'. Indeed, the designation 'OZ' was simply the acronym of what unified organization of design bureaus had had decided to call themselves since they had congregated to design an earlier prototype, the OZ-00MS 'Tallgeese'.

Tallgeese, while a phenomenal piece of engineering, was also impractically expensive and incredibly dangerous to its pilot, as the Main Armaments Directorate had correctly pointed out. So it had been left to sit in Corsica, where it had been finished, as a proof-of-concept, where Walker had found it weeks ago.

The Leo, on the other hand, was exactly what the Alliance needed, and could realistically compliment the tens of thousands of main battle tanks, ground-attack aircraft, and self-propelled artillery vehicles that the Alliance already counted on to secure the peace on Earth. The Main Directorate knew it, and OZ knew it. That year at Ansembourg, home to the Romefeller Proving Grounds, with mobile suits replacing the myriad of war machine designs needed by the Alliance, the Main Directorate was dismantled into a combination of number of smaller agencies, the lion's portion going to OZ, which had its headquarters in Luxembourg.

_Bureaucracy, like a life form, must be born, reproduce, and die_ , Walker mused. A butler in an elegant suit walked up to the castle gate and opened it slightly, before bowing politely.

"Sir Oswald, forgive me for keeping you waiting."

"That's perfectly fine," he said quickly, raising a hand. "And it's Sir Christopher, actually."

"My apologies, Sir Christopher. If you'll follow me, please. You're not carrying your sidearm, are you?"

"No."

"Excellent, sir."

He followed the butler into the dimly lit main hall.  _Sir Oswald. So, I was called here by the Romefeller Foundation._ Unlike the Alliance, the Romefeller Foundation regularly conferred titles of nobility upon warriors, particularly their favorites among the Speciali. Walker himself had been made a knight in AC 191, though it wasn't a hereditary title.

"If you'll please wait here, sir," the dignified butler repeated, bowing and walking away.

He stood in the darkness, surrounded by thick curtains over huge windows and ancient marble statues he couldn't really make the detail of, until a thick door to his left noisily opened. He turned, squinting in the darkness, and saluted sharply, striking the heels of his riding boots against each other.

"Your Excellency, Colonel Khushrenada. Flight Lieutenant Christopher Walker, formerly of the Forty-Fourth Special Airborne Division, Middle East Air Army, reporting for duty."

The voice came back supremely confident and in-control, while managing to not sound totally indifferent. "At ease, Lieutenant. You've no need to be so regimented. It appears I've made a mistake—should I call you 'Oswald' or 'Christopher'. Or would you prefer 'Walker'?"

"Your Excellency, 'Walker' would be fine, sir."

At the top of the grand staircase, in front of a pair of double doors, Colonel Treize Khushrenada, Commandant of the Special Mobile Suit Troops, Scion of the House of Khushrenada and Count of the Romefeller Foundation, smirked a little bit at Walker. Just a  _tiny_ bit. Stepping down the stairs leisurely, as Walker lowered his right arm, he revealed he was holding a small object in his right hand, a data disk.

"I believe it's been…four years, Walker?" he asked. He stood a good bit taller than Walker, but for all the latter knew, that might have been sheer psychological supremacy.

"Your Excellency, I'm flattered that you'd remember me." A fifteen-year-old Walker, along with a young Zechs Merquise, had been assembled as a unit for a secret operation the fifth point of the J.A.P., or Alliance Protection Zone east of Japan. It was before Zechs began wearing his iconic mask, but was already suspected to be an outstanding pilot.

The zone existed as a set of strategic points in the Pacific Ocean, when the East Asian Military District realized the possibility of a colonial insertion within striking distance of Tokyo, where the Alliance central government was currently located. In four years, the first Gundam would be spotted over the J.A.P., just as the East Asian Military District warned, but before that, there was a mutiny at the fifth point in Japan.

A small terrorist cell had managed to steal one of the new Aries suits, and Treize and Zechs were dispatched personally by first commandant of the Specials, Colonel General Chilias Catalonia. Walker and one of Catalonia's oldest and most trusted veterans, Broden, were assigned as their backup. As it happened, they were both largely unnecessary, when the two lead pilots wiped out the entirety of the cell and rescued the hostages they had taken. The operation was hugely successful, and Walker had been promoted to the rank of knight of the Romefeller Foundation.

_I doubt his Excellency called me here to wax nostalgia_ , Walker thought, as Treize showed him the disk.

"A gift to me, from an Alliance brigadier general who respects you enormously."

 

**II**

 

The two men were now inside the New Castle's top-rate computer design workshop, Walker sitting in front of a computer station as advance as any he'd worked with at Corsica.

Treize stood behind him, his eyes planted on the digital schematics visible on one of the large displays mounted on the wall above the fireplace mantle.

"This design came to my attention," Treize began. "Shortly after Operation 'Meteor' began in earnest. In searching for the members of the design team, you were the first man available, and I spoke to you to briefly about it. It's a tragedy that the Gundam's attack on Corsica happened that very day."

Walker nodded, not saying anything, and scrolling through the plans on his own monitor. He was actually panicking—for the first time, he'd realized he hadn't given much thought to the events immediately _before_ he was wounded at Corsica. It took a few seconds of panicked searching to recall the telephone conversation, and even then large gaps of it were still missing.

_"You called for me, your Excellency?"_

_"…could you finish it?"_

_"…"_ He had said something, but wasn't sure what.

_"You're certain, Walker?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Then we must acquire Gundanium alloy. The 'next' machine for the new era is necessary."_

_"…"_

Walker hid his anxiety the best he could. Before him were the basic schematics for a new Gundam, to be designed and fabricated by OZ, called 'Epyon', Greek for the word 'next'. He cleared his throat softly and flipped through the designs.

"I should tell you, your Excellency, the design of 'Epyon' was more a proof of concept than anything. When the Gundams first arrived on Earth, I analyzed all data sent to me by Lieutenant Colonel Zechs Merquise, whom I had previously served with. From that data, I came to the conclusion that the designs most closely resembled the prototype mobile suit 'Tallgeese', and that the prototype unit in Corsica could be made operational."

"And this design?" Treize asked, genuinely sounding curious.

"This Gundam was the combined effort of myself and three other engineers at Corsica, all of whom I knew from the Speciali. On the assumption of designing our own Gundam, we considered the advantages it would allow—for example, more space for internal systems and a larger power plant, and agreed upon a high-mobility chassis with variable-geometry, allowing for a mobile armor mode."

He changed the pages a few time. "As you can tell by its appearance, we were enormously influenced by what little we did know about the Gundams. And we only considered it briefly, we hadn't even considered what armaments it would carry."

Treize nodded. "When we spoke, I asked if you could finish it. You told me 'yes', if there were sufficient data." He put both hands behind his back, looking away from the design. "Would that still be possible?"

_So that's what I told his Excellency._ He thought about it for a split-second, hesitating. "Yes," he said finally. "I believe so, your Excellency. With sufficient observational data from the Gundams to account for a high-powered mobile suit made of Gundanium, and performance data from Tallgeese, demonstrating the stresses put on a pilot and the effectiveness of our current technology, Epyon's design could be finalized and then, ultimately, built. Once Tallgeese has been restored, of course."

Treize nodded and walked away from the desk, looking at the designs again, this time on a screen behind Walker. "Flight Lieutenant Walker."

Walker snapped out of the chair at attention. "Yes, sir."

"You are  _non assegnatti_  since the Battle of Corsica, haven't you?"

"That's correct, your Excellency."

"You're the only one of the four engineers who proposed Epyon who's still with us. I'd like you remain here, for the time being, and continue working on this design. Tallgeese  _is_ operational, thanks to your data brought to us by Bonaparte."

"It is?" Walker was shocked. The thought of that museum piece flying and fighting, this soon, was shocking.

"Indeed it is. A comrade of yours, Otto Richter, saw to that."

_Of course, Otto_.

Treize continued. "All data will be forwarded to you, and anything you need made available. Our Order will be very industrious in the coming days, and warriors like yourself will be called to the struggle. In the meantime, however, I want you to work on this design as much as you possibly can, as a personal favor to me."

_Astonishing!_ "If that's the case, your Excellency, I'll absolutely accept this task."

Treize regarded him with a smile—only a few people could 'regard' someone with a smile, but Treize Khushrenada was one of them—and he unintentionally beamed back. "Good," he told him. "The Foundation instructed me to confer upon you the rank of Baronet, for your valor in defense of the Corsica Works and Brigadier General Bonaparte, which I'm pleased to do, along with this  _exclusive_  assignment."

Walker understood exactly what Treize meant with the emphasis on the word "exclusive." The isolated New Castle in Ansembourg, practically Treize's own fiefdom, the data from the Gundams and Tallgeese, the designs that had been submitted—this was all information Treize intended to keep his and his alone. Walker was happy to comply.

"Very good, Walker. Lady Une will make the arrangements. From this point onwards, this is  _your_ project. Take pride in that fact."

_I don't think that's exactly true._ "Yes, your Excellency, but if I may ask one question."

He nodded wordlessly.

"What is Operation 'Meteor'?"

 

**III**

**  
**

The next week was very, very unusual.

Walker literally lived inside the New Castle. They were the most comfortable quarters he'd ever lived in, good food, good wine—since his liver was his, it was the one thing he allowed himself to still do, though only at dinner—beds more expensive than the apartment he'd grown up in.

He answered to no one, not the Alliance, not the Romefeller Foundation, not God, but Treize Khushrenada and his proxy, Lieutenant Colonel Une. As with Treize, Walker had met her before, though they were not personally acquainted—he'd be lying if he didn't say he found "Lady" Une a bit terrifying, including what he perceived as a willingness to treat the lives of Speciali as something to be thrown away whenever convenient. In truth, any ranking officer probably acknowledged that fact, but to be as blasé about it as Une was a terror for a field officer like Walker.

Additionally, Une wasn't at all impressed by his work. Une knew that he was  _not_ a genius or naturally brilliant, and that Epyon was a collaborative effort. Progress was exceedingly slow; no one expected Walker to finish designing a Gundam from the ground up, but when Walker had to candidly explain all the obstacles he and any future designers would encounter—developing a sufficiently powerful ultracompact fusion reactor that could fit inside it, coming up with countermeasures to protect it from the incredibly powerful beam weaponry one of the Gundams was known to carry, designing complex variable geometry that wouldn't break down in combat—were all things Une expected to be  _solved_ and soon. He used his familiarity with the next-generation extraterrestrial combat model, the OZ-12SMS 'Taurus'—to fill in some of the gaps. The Taurus line had been in development for years, and the appearance of the Gundams had resulted in the Alliance rushing it to the final proofing phase, when Speciali pilots with space combat training would operate them alongside the Alliance Space Forces, until the latter adopted it formally. The Taurus was truly revolutionary, something Walker appreciated as an engineer—it would actually have powerplant output, and beam weaponry, comparable to a Gundam in many respects.

And then there was the issue of weaponry: Walker was a mobile suit engineer, not a weapons engineer. At least in that regard, Treize seemed disinterested and easily satisfied: Walker had shown him the crude, rushed proposal that he'd come up with when Une told him he had a week to come up with  _one weapon_ in addition to everything else, and he'd liked it.

_Who'd have thought—a beam emitter directly linked to the powerplant, that would create an arc as long as the Gundam itself. Entirely doable, but not very practical._ Treize liked it, calling it "Pure and elegant," and Une didn't question with Treize, though Walker suspected she knew what he thought of it.

And there was what she said immediately afterwards. "Looks like you got away with it, Walker. Don't expect it to work twice."

Thankfully, he rarely saw either of them. In fact, he barely saw anyone, aside from Treize's butler. He liked to imagine that he was in the same league as the J. R. Oppenheimer, who did his work on the atomic bomb in complete isolation, or A. N. Tupolev, who was forced to work while under arrest, as millions of his countrymen were killed by outside invaders in Great Patriotic War. Except those men were brilliant, and Walker was merely an above-average engineer. After a week of doing it, Walker realized that those men probably weren't _completely_ alone, and that it was starting to take its toll on him.

Then, just as Treize had said, something came up to interrupt him.

He was working in his room at the New Castle, running hundreds of performance simulations based on optimistic reactor outputs. Epyon had the potential to be awesomely powerful close-range fighting machine,  _provided_ whoever was piloting it could get to their target  _and_ the powerplant, the vernier thrusters, the power distribution systems and the control interfaces could be developed, all of which were probably beyond his capability. He had huge quantities of performance data, and very little actual design information, all of which was from twenty-year-old Tallgeese.

_If I'm lucky, someone will kill that damn Maganac Gundam in the meantime_ , he thought as the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, expecting it to be Une, who was the only person who ever called him, and he didn't dare make calls himself.

"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel?" he said automatically. He was wrong. "Otto? I was wondering if you'd ever call, it's nice to hear your voice after all those messages. You sound a little…"

He was interrupted. "You did  _what_?" He stood up in his room. "Why would you do that? Doesn't anyone listen to a damn thing I say? You could have been killed, you fool!"

Flight Officer Otto Richter, whom Walker had known for three years at least, had taken out Tallgeese— _against_ all Walker's very clear instructions. Walker had written them with the consideration for the weak heart that he no longer had, but had calculated that, if made operational again, the pilot might endure up to 15 Gs. A careless maneuver while in the air, and the pilot, never mind the mobile suit, could be seriously injured.

"I'd say it served you right, but…" The light on the phone's base flashed. "Hold on, I've got Colonel Une on the line."

He switched the line. "Yes?"

Une's voice came in less clear than usual. "I'm sorry, ma'am, can you repeat that? You're coming in a little…wait, where are you?"

She was an ocean away, in North America. "New Edwards Air Force Base! Oh, I'm sorry, on an aircraft  _to_ New Edwards."  _When did she leave? She better not expect another update._

As it happened, she didn't. "Twenty-three hundred hours?" He looked at the clock on is computer—22:27. That gave him about thirty minutes to get to aircraft at Luxembourg-Fidel. "I'll need to leave now. But first I need to back everything up to the server."

Une barked on him to do it and he hung up. A few quick keystrokes, and the data began copying itself to the main server underneath the castle. He knocked his fist against the door a few times. "Jeeves, get my bike and bring the car around!"

He leapt back to his desk, and struck the key on the base again. "Otto, sorry about that, but I need to go. It's 'Daybreak'."

 


End file.
